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On the 45th anniversary of the Naksa, former PLO advisor and Palestine Papers whistleblower Ziyad Clot says a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel will never be achieved

Last month, thousands of Jewish Israelis celebrated Yom Yerushalayim, or Jerusalem Day. It was the 45th anniversary of what many Israelis consider the “reunification” of Jerusalem, an occasion for right-wing revelers to sing nationalistic songs, chant anti-Muslim slogans, and cheer for the mass murdering Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein while marching triumphantly through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. Today, Palestinians will observe Naksa Day, marking “the Setback” of 1967. It is the 45th anniversary of Israel’s ongoing military occupation, an ignominious date that inspires angry demonstrations across the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian refugee camps, and in cities around the world.

As the occupation grinds on, propelling rapid Israeli settlement expansion and the consolidation of apartheid rule, the concept of a sovereign Palestinian state seems like just that — a fantastical idea that belies the oppressive reality on the ground. The Palestinian Authority that was created to administer the future state today serves little purpose besides doling out paychecks to a long roll of dependents while providing Israel with a convenient occupation subcontractor that routinely arrestsnon-compliant Palestinians and internal critics of its authoritarian rule. Having been fragmented through generations of dispossession and colonization, then physically separated from one another by the separation wall and the siege of Gaza, Palestinians face an increasingly limited array of options for resisting Israel’s settler-colonial predations. With hopes for a viable, independent state all but dashed, questions about short term tactics and long term goals are being debated with renewed intensity.

While Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza prepared to commemorate Naksa Day, I met in a cafe in Washington DC with an author and former PLO legal advisor named Ziyad Clot. In January 2008, Clot was recruited to advise the Negotiations Support Unit of the PLO, which was tasked with overseeing the Palestinian refugee file. Until he resigned in dismay 11 months later, Clot said he witnessed “a cruel enterprise” that “deepened Israeli segregationist policies” and “excluded for the most part the vast majority of the Palestinian people.” In 2010, with images of Israel’s grisly assault on the Gaza Strip still singed in his memory, Clot published a provocatively titled polemic in his home country of France that has not yet been translated into English: “Il n’y aura pas d’Etat Palestinian,” or, “There will not be a Palestinian state.”

Soon after the book’s release, Clot leaked hundreds of documents relating to the so-called peace process to Al Jazeera, leading to the release of the Palestine Papers. Greeted with fury by PA officials, met with eerie silence by the Israeli government and quickly overshadowed by the Egyptian revolution, the Palestine Papers confirmed the peace process as a cruel farce that pitted an unrelenting occupier against an unrepresentative Palestinian entity beholden to antagonistic outside forces.

In our discussion, Clot went beyond his critique of the peace process, offering prescriptions for moving the Palestinian struggle past the drive for statehood and the failed experiment of the PA. According to Clot, the first priority of the struggle should be to ensure the full representation of the more than 10 million Palestinians living around the world by the PLO, a goal that can be achieved by allowing them to vote in Palestinian National Council elections. Once Palestinian exiles and refugees become convinced that they have a stake in the future of Palestine, Clot claimed their financial and cultural contributions would enable the PA to wean itself off of its onerous Western benefactors. Considering that only 8 percent of the Palestinians driven from the homes by the fighting in 1967 were allowed to return to Palestine, bringing them back into the political fray seems like an appropriate way to redress the crisis of the Naksa.

My interview with Ziyad Clot follows:

MB: Explain the title of your book. What caused you to conclude that there will never be a sovereign Palestinian state?

ZC: The big question today is whether after 45 years of occupation why there has been no sovereign state. The only advice I’d give to someone interested in this is to look at a map and ignore what will be the hypothetical borders of a future Palestinian state and recognize the fact that the two populations are intermingled in Israel and West Bank. Because of the colonization and the fact that no one has been able to stop it since 1967 we now reach a situation where in the West Bank there is not a single hill without a settlement or an outpost. How do you create a viable Palestinian state in that situation, and where this is not enough land or water to create that state? You can’t. Therefore all the attributes of the state aren’t there anymore. Jerusalem has become a de facto unified capital of Israel and what really struck me when I was there was the extraordinary gap between the facts on the ground and what is still being negotiated in this parallel world which has totally lost touch with reality.

MB: The Palestine Papers provide a portrait of a Palestinian Authority that is out of touch to say the least. Not only were they willing to negotiate away most of East Jerusalem, they seemed psychologically disjointed from the entire refugee situation. How can you account for the disconnect?

ZC: They [PA officials] live and negotiate under a situation of occupation. It’s easy for us to say they’re giving up and are ready for any compromise and that all the red lines have been crossed — and this is my personal belief — but they have to cope with so many constraints and obstacles that along the years that they lost touch with the exiles, then the refugees, then Gaza, and now East Jerusalem because of the wall, so they are left in this small enclave that they try to administer without full sovereignty. So along the years they have internalized these constraints and became accustomed to the discourse that is acceptable to the West. Because of the PA’s structure and how it is financed they are more accountable to the international donors than the Palestinian people. So this explains why the bridges between Palestinians don’t exist anymore. If there is one area where Palestinians should focus it’s on the issue of representation. Because the peace process has become irrelevant the question of who represents the Palestinians and how they are represented is most important at this point.

MB: Recently the Israeli politician and peace process fixture Yossi Beilin urged Mahmoud Abbas to shut down the Palestinian Authority. He even used the same language as you, calling the peace process a “farce.” Do you agree that the PA should be disbanded and if so, what comes next?

ZC: Dismantling the PA is a tough call because there are so many interests involved. If you dismantle it tomorrow a large proportion of the West Bank will be left without income. So it’s an extraordinary political decision to make. You also have to consider that the Israeli occupation is more brutal than what the Palestinians are facing with the PA so do we really want to face the occupation directly? If the long term goal is the achievement of Palestinian rights and self-determination, then it’s preferable. In the short term, this will probably mean a lot of suffering. Are the Palestinians prepared for that? I don’t think so. So to put it simply: These critical issues have to be decided by the Palestinians. It’s up to them to decide whether this state is achievable. If not, the different options should be submitted to them. Unfortunately, because of this lack of representation, this is impossible. That’s why I think the first priority should be to restructure the PLO. In the near term, the second priority should be to preserve the humanity of Palestinians who are experiencing massive suffering — especially the people in Gaza — because a political solution might be a long way off.

MB: What specific measures can be employed to offer the whole Palestinian people representation?

ZC: All Palestinians should be allowed to vote in the Palestinian National Council elections — all 10 million Palestinians should be involved and each voice should be heard. This is a very strong asset for the Palestinians. There are strong communities of Palestinians outside the territories. If you want to use them as an asset, either financially, politically, or culturally, you have to give them representation. The problem with the PA is not a lack of financial resources — there are a lot of wealthy Palestinians out there. So then we have to ask why the West is writing the checks without holding the Israelis accountable for anything. Wealthy Palestinians would be more than happy to contribute but unfortunately they don’t recognize themselves as actors who have representation in Palestine. Despite all the internal differences, we have to establish a structure to allow all these voices to be heard.

Update:Marc Tracy reports today that YNet and Commentary have severed their relationships with Meotti as a result of his plagiarism. Il Mondi Di Annibale, the Italian foreign policy site, has also taken Meotti to task. What will Meotti’s employers at Il Foglio do?

Meotti responds by accusing me of placing his life in danger, or at least causing him to “suffer.” But so far, any suffering that Meotti has endured has been self-inflicted. Meotti: “But this is a personal attack against my person and work of ten years, a demonization, a witch hunt against one of the last and few pro-Israel journalists in Europe. An attack in which arrogant and failed journalists didn’t hesitate to call me ‘hasbarist’ and ‘zionist’ in Arab newspapers. It seems that they don’t understand the consequences and the severe risks that an author like me in Europe can suffer because of their incitement.”

Italian columnist Giulio Meotti’s book, “A Second Shoah,” earned abundant praise from a Who’s Who of neoconservatism, from Victor Davis Hanson to Norman Podhoretz to John Bolton. George Weigel, the right-wing Catholic intellectual, hailed Meotti as a modern day Truman Capote, while the pro-Israel travel writer Michael Totten described the book, which contends that Israelis are victims of an ongoing Holocaust, as “very moving.” “We must be grateful to Giulio Meotti for his magisterial work,” wrote self-described Muslim apostate Ibn Warraq in the National Review.

This week, Marc Tracy at Tablet revealed several instances of plagiarism by Meotti, who is a columnist for YNet and the pro-Berlusconi Italian daily Il Foglio. According to Tracy, the plagiarism occurred in a recent piece by Meotti wrote contrasting Israel’s supposedly flawless record on gay rights with the record of the barbaric Arabs, who are portrayed through the increasingly popular pro-Israel tactic of pinkwashing as not culturally enlightened enough to enjoy their liberation. In the column, Meotti lifted entire paragraphs from writings by two fellow pro-Israel cadres, Jamie Kirchick and Brett Stephens.

Meotti’s penchant for plagiarism was not limited to a single column, however. Google a paragraph at random from any column and you are likely to find that he has lifted much of it, if not the whole thing, from someone else. Here are some examples (thanks to Michael Moynihan for pointing a few of these out):

On April 30, 2012, Meotti authored a column attacking advocates of the BDS campaign as anti-Semites and neo-Nazis. Meotti wrote:

Will the European Union, many of whose prominent members either participated or acquiesced in the destruction of European Jewry 70 years ago, put a stop to this obscurantist conspiracy of the grandchildren of those Max Weinreich called “Hitler’s Professors” to expel the Israelites (again) from the family of nations?

On January 3, 2003, Edward Alexander wrote in a column attacking BDS supporters:

More importantly, will the European Union, many of whose prominent members either participated or acquiesced in the destruction of European Jewry 60 years ago, put a stop to the conspiracy of these spiritual descendants of those Max Weinreich famously called “Hitler’s Professors,” to expel the Jews (once again) from the family of nations?

On May 12, 2012, in a piece assailing Islam as a genocidal religion of violence and hatred, Meotti wrote:

Islam’s supersessionary doctrine catalyzes destruction, oppression and hemorrhaging of Christians in eastern lands. While there were moments of laxity in applying this domination, Islam did not recoil from razing churches in ancient Damascus and slaughtering Christians in the Sub-Saharan plateau, inflicting atrocities in Aleppo or Mesopotamia.

Back in April, 2004, Mordechai Nisan wrote a remarkably similar column for the Jerusalem Post. It included the following passage:

Islam’s supersessionary religious doctrine catalyzed relentless destruction, oppression, and abuse of Christians in eastern lands. While there were moments of laxity and civility in applying the robust strictures of domination, Islam did not recoil from razing churches in ancient Damascus and slaughtering Christians in Mesopotamia, inflicting atrocities in Aleppo and exterminating Armenians in their homeland.

In an April 1, 2012 column attacking mainline Protestant church efforts to divest from Israeli companies — surprisingly the churches were portrayed as hotbeds of Jew hatred — Meotti wrote:

The Episcopal Church has two million members and 7,200 churches in the US and is part of the 77-million member Anglican Communion. Because of the relative wealth of its members, and its connections to the Church of England throughout the world, the Episcopal Church is in a strategic position to influence attitudes toward Israel on both a national and global scale.

Over five years earlier, in a September 6, 2006 piece for the pro-Israel media monitoring organization CAMERA, Dexter Van Zile wrote:

The Episcopal Church has approximately 2 million members and 7,200 churches in the U.S. and is part of the 77-million member Anglican Communion. Because of its presence in the U.S., the relative wealth of its members, and its connections to Anglicans throughout the world, the Episcopal Church is in a strategic position to influence attitudes toward Israel on both a national and global scale.

In an exceptionally bizarre attempt at hasbara, on May 3, 2012, Meotti asserted Israel’s cultural superiority by contrasting its alleged treatment of the handicapped with that of Arab societies. Meotti wrote:

The Weizmann Institute had led to the development of promising new therapies for acute spinal cord injuries. Indeed, the late actor Christopher Reeve described Israel as the “world center” for research.

This passage was lifted straight from a 2007 press release by the US-based Israel advocacy group, Israel 21c. The press release read:

Research by a professor at the Weizmann Institute has led to the development of promising new therapies for acute spinal cord injuries. The late actor Christopher Reeve described Israel as the ‘world-center’ for research on paralysis treatment.

Meotti is so bereft of originality that he even plagiarizes himself: He pasted a long section from a February 24, 2012 column about how “music can be a platform for anti-Semitism” into a piece he published two months later about anti-Semites in Hollywood working to destroy Israel.

The remarkable thing about Meotti’s plagiarism scandal is that it is not being treated as much of a scandal at all. Yedioth Aharanot, the parent company of YNet, has apparently not taken any punitive measures against Meotti. And neither Kirchick nor Stephens expressed any outrage about being plagiarized. Instead, Kirchick dismissed Meotti’s stealing as “a form of flattery” and Stephens, who also said he was “flattered,” said Meotti’s column “makes a point worth repeating.” Their startling reactions reflect a neoconservative culture in which the cause of Greater Israel supersedes everything else, from journalistic ethics to intellectual originality.

Because Kirchick, Stephens and Meotti draw their arguments from the same storehouse of recycled Likudnik hasbara, their columns are virtually indistinguishable and completely interchangeable. If any one of them disappeared, some other pro-Israel cadre could step into their shoes without anyone noticing. As Meotti demonstrated, it takes little more than cutting and pasting press releases from Israel advocacy groups to succeed in the world of neoconservatism.

New York Times Jerusalem Deputy Bureau Chief Isabel Kershner is married to Hirsh Goodman, an Israeli citizen and prominent liberal Zionist intellectual. Goodman works at a military-linked Israeli think tank called the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), where he serves as a senior research fellow in a position endowed by the billionaire Jewish philanthropist Charles Bronfman. On the INSS website, Goodman described his job as helping “Israel devise a strategy to impact positively on international and Arab public opinion and overall disseminate its message more effectively” — in other words, media spin. In a recent column for the Jerusalem Post, Goodman urged the government of Israel to treat threats to its image as acts of war, and to respond in kind.

An ethical reporter on a politically sensitive assignment might have avoided allowing intimate relationships they maintained with people at the center of the conflict to impact their reporting. But not Kershner. As Alex Kane just revealed in a devastating report published by the media watchdog FAIR, Kershner “overwhelmingly relies on the INSS for think tank analysis about events in the region.” According to Kane, Kershner has quoted her husband’s think tank a whopping 17 times — far more than any other comparable policy outfit. However, she has yet to publicly disclose her connection to the INSS and the media spin strategist who doubles as her husband.

The Times’ former Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Ethan Bronner, left his job last month after a string of humiliating scandals. First, the Times public editor called for his reassignment when he attempted to conceal from the public his son’s enlistment in the Israeli army. However, Times editor in chief Bill Keller rejected the recommendation. Bronner suffered further embarrassment when I exposed his business relationship with a pro-Israel public relations firm operated by an illegal settler. Once again, the Times editorial leadership let him off the hook.

Last month, at a farewell party for Bronner in East Jerusalem sponsored by the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA), international diplomats and members of the Israeli and Palestinian intelligensia grilled the outgoing bureau chief about his conflicts of interest. One Israeli journalist in attendance told me Bronner expressed no misgivings about his conduct, treating his questioners with a mixture of dismissiveness and smug condescension. After a group of young Palestinian intellectuals and activists stormed out in disgust, a South African diplomat reminded Bronner that he could not “determine his own objectivity.” The rancorous scene illustrated the deep stain Bronner’s legacy had left on the Times’ reputation in Israel-Palestine.

Though Bronner is gone, Kershner’s clear violations of Times ethical guidelines are likely to compound the damage to the paper’s credibility in the region. Will the Times ignore Kane’s reporting, exempting Kershner from rules other reporters are required to stringently observe, or will Public Editor Arthur Brisbane treat the revelations with the seriousness they deserve?

Tel Aviv University was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwannis. The university’s faculty lounge is the village mukhtar’s former home. At the corner of Arlosoroff and Ibn Gvirol streets, where the Century Tower skyscraper stands, a Palestinian village named Sommeil used to exist.

When activists from the Israeli group Zochrot set out into the heart of Tel Aviv’s “Independence Day” festivities to educate revelers about these facts, they were accused of engaging in criminal activities.

As soon as the activists attempted to exit an office building to place small placards on Ibn Gvirol Street memorializing Palestinian villages destroyed during the Nakba, riot police surrounded them with metal gates, blocking them inside. The police informed them that they would be arrested if they attempted to interact with the crowds celebrating Israel’s birth. “We will not allow you to enter the celebrations with your pictures or your fliers,” a cop told Zochrot’s Eitan Bronstein. “We will not allow this form of protest. It might disturb the peace so we won’t allow it.” Another police officer told Bronstein his placards represented “inciting material.”

Though the police repression can hardly be excused, there is some reason to believe the Zochrot activists could have been subjected to harsh violence if they had been allowed to proceed with their action. While caged behind the metal gates, passersby surrounded the activists and held forth. “You’re lucky the police is here. You should thank them,” said a bald, beefy man who had to be led away.

Another hulking character who identified himself as a member of Unit 51 from the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade paratrooper corps barked at the activists, “The only thing you are is a bunch of traitors. Every day people here are fighting… This is unbelievable. You are traitors and if we had the chance we would shoot you one by one. One by one we would shoot you…”

The demonstration concluded with police violently arresting three participants including one man for the crime of reading aloud the names of destroyed Palestinian villages.

Lia Tarachansky of the Real News Network filmed the melee. Her footage is below:

The repression of Zochrot’s educational action was the street level manifestation of the campaign the Israeli government has waged to mute discussion of the Nakba and punish those who violate the code of silence. Last year, the government passed a law that allows the denial of state funding to NGO’s that participate in Nakba commemorations. In 2009, it banned the use of the term “Nakba” in school textbooks. Limor Livnat, a right-wing Knesset member who co-sponsored the so-called Nakba Law and banned textbooks using the word during her term as Israel’s Education Minister, declared that merely allowing students to learn about the mass expulsion of Palestinians during 1947 and 1948 would encourage them to work against the Jewish state.

The images of brawny riot cops — literal thought police — roughing up the small band of Zochrot members for publicly reading “inciting” facts recalled a passage from a widely publicized book about the importance of promoting democracy around the globe. “If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm,” the book read, “then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society.”

The book is called “The Case For Democracy.” One of its authors, Natan Sharansky, was a former Soviet dissident who currently heads the Jewish Agency, a key arm of Israel’s settlement enterprise. The other author is Ron Dermer, an advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu known as “Bibi’s brain.” Together, the two called for overthrowing repressive regimes around the world, inspiring former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to quote their so-called “Town Square Test,” while they actively guided Israel’s descent into authoritarianism.

How could Sharansky and Dermer fail to see the irony in their actions? As the scenes from Zochrot’s demonstration illustrated, reflection is never an option in a fear society.

The Israeli daily Maariv recently reported [in Hebrew] that BTS, a mercenary firm run by a former Israeli army colonel and veteran bodyguard, Beni Tal, proposed to Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai a plan to violently expel thousands of African migrant workers and refugees living near Tel Aviv’s central bus station.

According to Maariv, Tal told Tel Aviv municipal representatives he would gather intelligence on the African migrant population before sending in hundreds of security guards to cuff them and ship them away on buses or trucks. “This should be a very violent action,” Tal said.

“I have never seen a place so violent, not even in the roughest parts of New York,” Tal remarked. “So we need to bring in guys who are not afraid of anything, put people on trucks, and within six months return the bus station to its residents… This population [Africans] is very problematic.”

Though the Tel Aviv municipality ultimately rejected Tal’s proposal, Maariv reported that a municipal official brought the plan up in a meeting of the Israeli Knesset’s Special Committee regarding Foreign Workers. The representative claimed he raised Tal’s proposal merely to highlight the supposed severity of the situation in southern Tel Aviv.

I have spent countless hours in Tel Aviv’s central bus station and in the surrounding Neve Shaanan neighborhood, where much of the city’s migrant worker population lives. The only people who have ever threatened me there were plainclothes agents from Israel’s Oz Unit, which routinely accosts and arrests migrants around the bus station, and who once stopped me by the bus station to demand proof I was in the country legally.

The neighborhood may be impoverished and overcrowded, but it is hardly dangerous by urban American standards. When a Maariv reporter confronted Tal with the fact that crime in Neve Shaanan was no higher than anywhere else in the city, he protested that the statistics were false, but was unable to produce evidence to support his point.

Some migrants from Africa have arrived in Israel to occupy the menial jobs that Palestinians performed before they were tucked behind a separation wall and Gaza was completely besieged. They are the glue that holds Tel Aviv together, washing dishes, cooking food, cleaning bathrooms, and changing children’s diapers so the city’s Jewish residents can enjoy the First World, Eurocentric lifestyle they have come to expect. Others arrived from Africa fleeing war and civil strife. By some estimates, 60 percent of Sudanese migrants are eligible for asylum status.

David Sheen’s devastating video documentary [above] illustrates how Israel’s draconian approach to African refugees is rooted in deeply ingrained racist attitudes and an official policy of countering demographic threats. Sheen’s report highlights how security concerns were manufactured to establish a pretext for enforcing the state’s exclusivist priorities against those condemned as “infiltrators.”

The recently passed “Prevention of Infiltration Bill,” which mandates a three year prison sentence without trial for illegal migrants, was nothing more than an amendment to the pre-existing 1954 “Prevention of Infiltration Law” enacted after the Nakba to prevent Palestinian refugees from reuniting with their family members inside the newly created state of Israel. As Israeli human rights activist Leehee Rothschild wrote, “At the end of the day, the justification for both the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law as well was the new amendment is one and the same – the maintenance of the Jewish character of the State of Israel.”

Last month, Israel began construction on what will be the world’s largest detention center. Labeled by none other than Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin as a “concentration camp where people are warehoused,” the prison will sit in the Negev Desert on the grounds of what was once Ketziot Prison, a detention camp for Palestinian detainees staffed by the Atlantic Magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg. The new super-jail is being erected for the sole purpose of containing migrants and asylum seeking refugees fleeing from Africa.

Describing the desert prison as a “humanitarian solution,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified its construction on the grounds that African refugees threaten to “change[] the character of the state.”